


unknown except to the flowered dead

by OfShoesAndShips



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 14:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5251016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A king and a book consider things, for a moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unknown except to the flowered dead

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from The Shires, by John Fuller. 
> 
> "The brown teapot is always warming here  
> For there will be a time when you must come home  
> Though you be unknown except to the flowered dead."

 

 

He is not quite sure when it happened, when something he had considered momentary became _this_. It feels a little too strange, though admittedly his conception of the strange has changed rather, over the years. But he does not think that he is wrong. They walk quietly beside each other across the wide expanse of Yorkshire moor, he and Vinculus, only occasionally brushing against each other.

 

They are not going anywhere. But there is something comfortable about walking here, in this place that is not precisely what it is, just as they are. Stephen Black, the nameless slave, and now the Nameless King, who has spent his life in strange countries. Vinculus, the Book of the Raven King, who even now remains unread. And His country, that even now beneath their feet appears to be slowly easing itself awake.

 

“You are thinking deep thoughts, o King,” Vinculus says, half laughing, as if he can see his thoughts spread out across his skin. Perhaps he can. Perhaps they are all, in some way, the Books of the King whose lands they trespass on.

 

“Not so deep,” he says.

 

Vinculus shugs. It does not seem to bother him one way or another, this place. He does not carry himself with the baring of a subject, the King realises, and for a moment something swells up in his chest. He considers that must not be the easiest thing to do - or rather, not do - when that is all people consider you to be.

 

“Do you consider him your King?” he asks, suddenly, and Vinculus turns to him, feet crunching on the blackened twists of dead heather.

 

Vinculus tilts his head and considers. “No,” he says, eventually, “Do you consider yourself a King?”

 

He blinks. “No,” he says, and Vinculus nods, as if he had expected nothing else.

 

“We have no Kings, then, you and I,” he says, “And that is all it’s likely to be for a while, King against King. Only you and I, unaffiliated.”

 

“Have we not always been so?”

 

Vinculus laughs, a sound as dry and cracked as the heather. “As you say,” he murmurs.

 

He does not seem inclined to say more, and so they continue on, across the quietly dozing moor. The wind is still, though it seems to sit thickly in the air; the air is sharp against the back of his throat as he breathes. Their feet are damp from the grass, and the King’s overcoat around Vinculus’s shoulders billows slightly as he moves.

  
Perhaps this is nothing, he thinks. But it does not feel like nothing. It does not quite feel like _something_ , either, but when they touch - Vinculus’s hand brushing his, the bump of their shoulders - they do not move away.


End file.
